The joy of meditation as daily food

Hindsight is often 2020. I find myself, once again, realizing how to apply the old insight that the joy of meditation is the daily food needed for my wellbeing and the wellbeing of my relationships.

I’ve been taught this over and over again throughout my years practicing with Plum Village. The sentence in Vietnamese from Thich Nhat Hanh is, “Thiền duyệt vi thực,” which translates as “The joy of meditation as your daily food.” He has written this in calligraphy and I believe these are the words on the Classical Chinese calligraphy in his hut in Upper Hamlet, Plum Village.

I recently came back to this idea, that the joy of meditation is needed daily, while reflecting on how I could have handled a moment of challenge differently. It came up in combination with two other quotes. The first is from Thich Nhat Hanh, who, with full patience and kindness, would remind his students repeatedly that “every moment is an opportunity” for practice. The second is from Marisela Gomez, an activist and dharma teacher in the Plum Village tradition, who said, “you have to schedule your awakening.”

“Every moment is an opportunity”

“Every moment is an opportunity” reminds me that there are so many moments in my daily life that could become opportunities to nourish joy in myself and interrupt my habit energies that often carry me away from the way I want to live my life. Simple moments, like walking up the stairs, or stepping outside for the first time in the morning can be opportunities to come home to the present moment, enjoy, and rest back.

“You have to schedule your awakening”

“Scheduling my awakening” reminds me that I can, in fact, schedule my awakening. Quite literally. I can put a daily schedule into place that reminds me to practice self-care and meditation – especially useful for the chapters of life when I easily become busy and lost in my habits.

“The joy of meditation as your daily food”

I feel like the above two quotes feed (no pun intended 😉) into this one.

Often, Zen can seem simple on the surface. When I hear the words, “The joy of meditation as your daily food,” it can be easy to say in my mind, “yeah, yeah, I know, but is that really enough?” It can be easy to want the practice to be more complex and to want to go on to a next “stage” of meditation. Sometimes, I can get lost in wanting to study technical buddhist psychology, searching for “answers”, something more to be the magic bullet — and while this kind of study can, and has been, very helpful in my life — sometimes I lose track of foundational meditation practice. I lose the daily food of mediation.

For me, in the summer months, when there is so much happening — travel, seeing friends, attending weddings, and lots of mindfulness retreats — I can lose my daily practice schedule at home. I somehow never lose the regularity of my morning coffee, regardless of where I am in the world, but somehow I do lose the regularity of my morning meditation.

I saw the effects of this a few days ago. One evening I did some deep listening to a friend who was suffering. A few aspects of it touched an old childhood wound in me. By the next morning, I was having all kinds of upsetting thoughts and feelings, and I got lost in my habits of analysis and non-stop thinking. In my confusion, I couldn’t see a path forward, and that was distressing. I became laser focused on solving the “problem” and lost the ability to broaden my perspective and see creative ways to understand and care for the situation. Without realizing it, I got lost in my upset for most of a day.

A few days later, I was reflecting on the day and wondering what I could have done differently.

In actual practice, I think it’s quite hard for me to purposefully break out of the mental habit of trying to think through a problem. My brain can get stuck and loop around and around on the same thought. The most challenging time for me to settle my mind is during storms of strong emotions. This is, of course, backed by science — when the region of the brain that houses the Amygdala has taken over (the area that is responsible for the fight/flight/freeze/fawn response), the Pre-Frontal Cortex (the brain region does the work of helping us regulate emotions and see clearly) is less active.

The most challenging time to meditate is right in the middle of a storm of emotion.

When I’m outside the moment and I reflect back, I can see that in big storms I need to drop into what I am feeling in a somatic sense. I need to befriend those sensations and parts of me that are upset, before I’m able to return to the words and analysis of the current problem. When I ground myself in my body, only then does it become possible to broaden out my attention, with clear thinking, to see a helpful/appropriate path forwards.

This is where daily meditation comes in.

I can nourish this capacity in myself daily so it’s more easily accessed. With daily practice in the past, I’ve seen the positive impacts on my daily life. I know I can rely on it if I commit to it again.

It’s like regular physical exercise, if I schedule it in, I just do it. When I do it regularly, I become stronger.

Daily meditation can also serve as an interruption. A habit is always easier to implement. So, if I’m in the midst of a storm of emotions, if I have a scheduled time for meditation, the habit that is formed because of that supports the moment. Habit makes meditation easier.

Big Storms

So, in writing this blog post, I’m setting an intention to re-commit to scheduled daily practice to support three things:

1. In the calm moments of life, daily meditation serves as strength development for the future big storm of emotion that will roll in
2. During the big storms of life, it can serve as an interruption of those less helpful mental habits
3. As difficulties pass, daily meditation can be a time for reflection, in support of future me

Depending on the context, I also use the analogies of a “big game” or a “big performance/show” instead of “big storm.” There is a reason meditation teachers use the word “practice” when talking about developing mindfulness, concentration, and insight. It takes repetition to develop. That repetition is what keeps us healthy to be able to meet the big and small moments of challenge, excitement, and turmoil in life with as much grace, compassion, and clarity as possible.

With a bit of daily food, the joy of meditation, we can not only experience joy during the meditation, we can develop the capacity to see life situations in new light and to care for a nervous system in the midst of suffering, pain, and confusion.

There is a path forwards, I just have to remind myself to stick to it. I need to stay ready, so I don’t have to get ready.

p.s. to read more about “staying ready”, see this related blog post from 2023: We stay ready, so we don’t have to get ready

As always, the resources page is here for you. All the links, resources, and references from every post are collected there.

For those reading this that aren’t subscribed, please subscribe! Knowing that there are folks out there reading helps motivate me to continue.

As always, please leave a comment or message me. I’d love to hear from you 🙂.